Dogs love us not only because we feed them, walk them, or groom them, or protect them, but because we are fun. How astonishing!

We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.

Every time I told my cocker spaniel, Taffy, my very first dog, that we were going for a walk, she would launch into a celebratory dance that ended with her racing around the room, always clockwise, and faster and faster, as if her joy could not be possibly contained. Even as a young boy I knew that hardly any creature could express joy so vividly as a dog.

The curiosity of cats is, like their affection, of a purity and intensity rarely seen in humans. We would be jaded when faced with the fiftieth paper bag. Not so our cats.

Questers of the truth, that’s who dogs are; seekers after the invisible scent of another being’s authentic core.

What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we will see. Humans seem to take perverse pleasure in attributing stupidity to animals when it is almost always entirely a question of human ignorance.

Dogs never lie about love.